Miyako phonology
The description here is mostly based on the Ōgami variant, the Central Miyako variant of the smallest of the Miyako islands, from Pellard (2009). Central Miyako variants do not have pitch accent; therefore, they are of ikkei type. Tarama distinguishes accent on the phonological word (stem plus clitics), e.g. , , , Vowels There are five vowels. is truly unrounded, unlike the compressed Japanese u''. It is centralized after . is rounded normally, but varies as . varies from to . Numerous vowel sequences occur, and long vowels are treated as sequences of identical vowels, keeping the inventory at five. Historical *i and *u centralized and merged to as *e and *o rose to /i/ and /u/. The blade of the tongue in is close to the alveolar ridge, and this feature has been inaccurately described as "apical" (it is actually laminal).Hayato Aoi, in ''Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages, p. 406 In certain environments rises beyond vowel space to syllabic after and (especially before another voiced consonant) and, in variants that have voiced stops, to after and : : *pito > pstu 'person', *kimo > ksmu 'liver', *tabi > tabz 'journey' in Shimazato variant. Ōgami vowels other than are not subject to devoicing next to unvoiced consonants the way Japanese high vowels are. Sequences of phonetic consonants have been analyzed by Pellard (2009) as being phonemically consonantal as well. Tarama has four main vowels, and two marginal vowels found in a restricted set of words. In Tarama, is between voiceless consonants, otherwise after plosives, and elsewhere: : 'person', 'yellow', 'right' The sequences , , , do not occur. They have changed to , , and ( ). Consonants In Ōgami there are nine consonants, without a voicing contrast. (Most Miyako variants do distinguish voicing.) The plosives tend to be somewhat aspirated initially and voiced medially. There are maybe a dozen words with optionally voiced initial consonants, such as babe ~ pape (a sp. of fish) and gakspstu ~ kakspstu 'glutton',Less likely is 'wolverine'; the French glouton (like the English 'glutton') can both describe people and be a name for the animal, but the Miyako word is glossed as being composed of morphemes meaning "hungry ghost" and "person". but Pellard suggests they may be loans (babe is found in other variants, and gaks-'' is a Chinese loan; only a single word ''gama ~ kama 'grotto, cave' is not an apparent loan). may be spirantized before : kaina 'arm' , a꞊ka 'I (nominative)' . is at the end of a word, and assimilates to succeeding consonants ( ) before another consonant. When final geminates, it becomes ; compare tin 'silver' with tinnu 'silver (accusative)'. It tends to devoice after and . , on the other hand, does not assimilate and appears finally unchanged, as in mku 'right', mta 'earth', and im 'sea'. is labiodental, not bilabial, and palatalizes to before the front vowels : pssi 'cold'. Some speakers insert an epenthetic between and in what would otherwise be a sequence thereof, as in ansi 'thus'. is clearly labiodental as well and tends to become a fricative when emphasized or when geminated, as in 'calf'. It can be syllabic, as can all sonorants in Ōgami: vv 'to sell'. Final contrasts with the high back vowels: 'snake', 'stick', 'fly' are accusative with the clitic ''-u''. Various sequences of consonants occur (mna 'shell', sta 'under', fta 'lid'), and long consonants are bimoraic (sta fta , pstu ), so they are analyzed as consonant sequences as well. These can be typologically unusual: : (sp. small fruit) : 'now' : 'you' : 'baby' : 'grass' : 'comb. ' (from ff 'comb')ff derives historically from fusi, but there is no indication of vowels in the Ōgami word. : 'vegetable' : 'white' : 'dust. ' (from ss 'dust') : 'mother' : 'potato. ' (from mm 'potato') : 'day' Geminate plosives do not occur, apart from a single morpheme, the quotative particle tta. There are a few words with no voiced sounds at all (compare Nuxálk language § Syllables): :ss 'dust, a nest, to rub' :kss 'breast/milk, hook / to fish, to come' :pss 'day, vulva' :ff 'a comb, to bite, to rain, to close' :kff 'to make' :fks 'to build' :ksks 'month, to listen, to arrive', etc. :sks 'to cut' :psks 'to pull' The contrast between a voiceless syllable and a voiced vowel between voiceless consonants can be seen in kff puskam 'I want to make (it)', ff꞊nkɑi 'to꞊the.comb', and paks꞊nu꞊tu 'bee꞊ ' (with a devoiced nasal after s''). There is a contrast between ''ff꞊mɑi 'comb꞊ ' and ffu꞊mɑi 'shit꞊ '. With tongue twisters, speakers do not insert schwas or other voiced sounds to aid in pronunciation: :kff ff 'the comb that I make' :kff ss 'the nest that I make' :kff kss 'the hook that I make' The minimal word is either VV, VC, or CC (consisting of a single geminate), as in aa 'millet', ui 'over', is 'rock', ff 'comb'. There are no V or CV words; however, CCV and CVV words are found, as shown above. Syllabification is difficult to analyze, especially in words such as usnkai (us-nkai) 'cow- ' and saiafn (saiaf-n) 'carpenter- '. Tarama does have voiced stops: The realization of /r/ is unclear. Word-finally it is . The two nasals may be syllabic, as in mm 'potato' and nna 'rope'. 'Onsets' include geminate consonants, as in ssam 'loose' and ffa 'child'. Otherwise, the only consonant clusters are /Cj/, as in kjuu 'today', sjata 'sugar'. Sonorants can end syllables and words, as in kan 'crab', mim 'ear', and tur 'bird'. Vowel sequences include long vowels Vː and the 'diphthongs' Vi, and Vɨ. This structure has been analyzed as a syllable, but initial geminate consonants, long vowels and diphthongs are all bimoraic, and codas are moraic as well, so that e.g. ssam is three moras ( . A phonological word must be at least two moras long. References External links * Category:Language phonologies